"Zerida?" Zoey murmured, realization hitting her at the same moment it struck Rumi and Mira. "As in… Zerida Jeong?"
"As in one of the Sunlight Sisters?" Rumi breathed, her usual sharp tone softened by awe.
"You were Celine's and Ryu's partner," Mira added, her irritation faltering for just a moment.
Zoey, however, could barely contain herself. "You look nothing like in the magazines!" she squealed, somehow producing a worn issue from her bag and flipping it open in record time.
But before she could shove it in anyone's face, Zerida lifted a single hand.
The effect was instant. The room stilled, the air seemed to tighten, and even Zoey froze mid-squeal. Authority radiated from Zerida's gesture, enough to silence all members of Huntrix instantly.
"We are not here to discuss me," Zerida said evenly, her voice leaving no room for argument. Her gaze slid toward Rumi, sharp as a blade. "Certainly not my appearance, when one of you carries those patterns."
Rumi's jaw tightened. Mira's eyes narrowed, a low growl building in her throat. Zoey, sheepish, slid the magazine back into her bag, looking like a scolded puppy.
"Then why are you here?" Rumi asked, her voice strained between frustration and hostility.
"And what did you mean by Demon Hunters Corps?" Mira added, her tone sharper, edged with challenge. "That's the first time I'm hearing about this."
Zerida let the silence stretch until it pressed heavy against the walls. When she finally spoke, her words cut clean and precise.
"You have your mentor to thank for that," she said, turning her eyes on Celine with cool disdain. "Though it wouldn't be the first time she failed to inform…"
"Zeri, I..." Celine began, her voice uncertain.
"You. Be quiet." Zerida's snap was soft but merciless. "At this point, I'm not even surprised."
Rumi's anger faltered under the weight of confusion. "What is going on?"
Finally, Zerida's gaze returned to her, steady and unreadable.
"Who are the Demon Hunters Corps?" Rumi pressed, her voice firm despite the storm in her chest. "And why didn't we know about them? About you?"
Zerida leaned back in her chair, crossing one leg over the other with deliberate ease. Her expression did not soften.
"The Magwi Sanyangdan, the Demon Hunters' Corps, were formed long before our generation," she said. "One of the Hunters from that era founded it after she passed her power to the next three. She believed that just because she didn't have the Honmoon's magic didn't mean she couldn't still help against the threat of the demons. My guess is she didn't feel comfortable leaving the safety of the people to kids."
Zoey frowned at that and she just knew that Rumi and Mira were not impressed as well.
Zerida tapped a finger once against her knee. "Without the Honmoon's magic, we can't touch the Honmoon the way you can. But we can still perceive what ordinary people can't. And there are more people like that among us. We see the weave. We can detect when it thins."
Mira's eyes flicked to the ceiling, as if the threads might be visible there. It was. Zerida continued.
"The Honmoon is a global barrier. Weak spots don't form politely in one district at a time. They bloom wherever the world is weakest, ports, hospitals, places steeped in grief, anywhere. Three Demon Hunters cannot be everywhere at once. That is where the Corps stands. We patrol. We identify stress points. When a breach flares, we fight and hold the line until you repair what only you can repair."
"The leaders of the Magwi Sanyangdan have always been one of the Demon Hunters," Zerida said, her tone edged with accusation as her gaze cut toward Celine. "So when we disbanded," she let the words hang, heavy with blame."and… your mother died…"
Celine flinched, her shoulders drawing in as if she could fold herself smaller, though she refused to look away. Zerida pressed on without mercy.
"We decided then that she," she gestured sharply at Celine, "would mentor the next generation of Hunters. And I would take leadership of the organization."
Rumi's breath caught in her chest, the weight of the revelation sinking into her bones. Mira, however, kept her eyes on Zerida, suspicion sharp in every glance.
Zoey fidgeted, chewing her lip, glancing between them all. A whole organization of Demon Hunters, hidden away, working in the shadows, and they hadn't known a thing. She finally spoke, her voice unusually small.
"Why didn't you tell us about them, Celine? Why didn't you want us to know?"
Celine's eyes dropped to the floor, her expression distant, like her mind had already fled somewhere else, somewhere painful. Seconds ticked by in silence before she finally exhaled.
"It was for your safety, Rumi," she said quietly.
Zerida scoffed, rolling her eyes. "Safety. How quaint." She straightened, voice slicing through the room. "We're losing focus. I didn't come here for history lessons or sentimental excuses. I came here because of an ongoing emergency."
Mira raised a brow, unimpressed. "Emergency? What could you possibly want with us? The Honmoon is stable, the barrier's sealed. Gwi-Ma is gone. Unless…" her tone darkened, her body coiling like a spring. "Unless you're here because Rumi is part demon. Is that it? Now that the demons are gone, you're going to eliminate her? Well, let me tell you something, if you think..."
"The demons aren't gone."
The calm certainty in Zerida's voice silenced Mira like a blade through air.
Rumi's head snapped toward her, disbelief flashing in her silver eyes. "What?" she asked before she could stop herself. "I'm sorry, I thought I heard you say the demons aren't gone."
"You heard me correctly." Zerida lifted her hand, and without needing to speak, one of the young women behind her stepped forward and placed a crystal glass of wine into her palm. She accepted it with the ease of a queen accustomed to service.
"That's… that's impossible," Zoey blurted out, leaning forward. "We beat Gwi-Ma! We sealed him away. It's over!"
"Likely story." Zerida's words were dismissive, tossed out like a judgment.
Rumi's chest tightened, anger boiling beneath her confusion. "Excuse me? Are you trying to insinuate something? You have no idea what we went through. We saved the world. It was our song, our voices..."
"Then why didn't the Honmoon turn gold?" Zerida cut her off, swirling the dark liquid in her glass as though she had all the time in the world. Her eyes glinted. "We're supposed to believe this new Honmoon will hold Gwi-Ma back indefinitely? That the three of you accomplished with a single song what took generations of Demon Hunters to even attempt?"
She tilted her head, her gaze sharp as it landed on Rumi. "Or perhaps this was your plan all along. To pacify us with a counterfeit Honmoon while the demons gather their strength."
The words struck like a blade, and Rumi reeled back, eyes blazing. "What are you even talking about? I would never do that! I am a Hunter!"
"No." Zerida's voice thundered through the room, cracking the air. She slammed her hand shut, the glass in her grip shattering with a violent pop, shards scattering like falling stars. Crimson streaked her palm, but she didn't flinch.
"You are a demon!"
The word hit harder than the shattering glass.
Rumi's throat closed, a tremor running through her arms as if Zerida's accusation had cracked something inside her. Mira was on her feet before she could stop herself, her chair screeching across the floor.
"Watch your mouth!" Mira's voice was a growl, her body angled between Rumi and Zerida like a shield. "Say it again, and I'll..."
In the instant it took to stand up, the two young women had already moved in front of Zerida, their movements sharp and practiced. With a fluid motion, they drew their weapons.
At first glance, the weapons resembled the kind Zoey and her friends carried, yet there was a subtle difference. The blades bore faint veins of light that flickered weakly. The glow was dimmer, less alive, and much of the weapon's surface was forged from cold steel rather than pure spirit-forged material.
"You'll what?" Zerida's bleeding hand flexed, crimson dripping onto the marble floor, each drop loud in the silence. "Strike me? As if the tantrum of a child could alter what's written in her very blood."
"Enough!" Celine snapped, her voice rising for the first time, sharp and commanding. Her hands slammed against the table, the echo ringing through the hall. "Zerida, I will not let you tear her down. Not here. Not in front of me."
But Zerida only gave her a look steeped in cold disdain. "You coddled them too long, Celine. You hid the Corps. You hid the truth. And now your little protégés don't even understand the danger still clawing at our walls."
"What danger?" Zoey asked shakily, her voice breaking through the tension. "If Gwi-Ma's sealed, what else is there?"
Zerida leaned back, the shards of glass still glittering across the table like broken stars. Her tone turned deliberate, hardened as she leaned forward, her gaze fixed on Rumi.
"Believe me when I say I wanted your story to be true. When six months passed without a single demon sighting, I almost let myself believe it. For the first time in years, I thought maybe we'd finally beaten them back."
Her expression darkened. "But then, one of our operatives vanished. At first, we were worried, but not alarmed. Disappearances happen in this line of work. We dispatched a small team to investigate. Before they could find anything, three more operatives vanished, one in Dubai, two in America. That was when concern became dread."
She paused, folding her arms across her chest as if bracing herself. "So, I authorized a full-scale investigation. Our trackers pieced together their movements, their patterns… until at last, they found signs of the next strike. I approved the ambush myself." Her voice grew colder. "Seventeen Demon Hunters deployed. Only one came back alive."
Her fingers drummed once against the table before stilling. "He was half-dead when we recovered him, broken, delirious. We pressed him for answers. He remembered almost nothing of the battle… except this." Zerida's eyes narrowed. "It wasn't just a demon that wiped them out. It was a demon who fought like a hunter."
She let the words hang, her gaze sharp and unyielding on Rumi. "Sound familiar?"
Rumi's eyes widened, and so did Mira's and Zoey's, but Zerida wasn't finished.
"Of course, I knew this wasn't something we could handle alone," she continued, her tone sharp, almost cutting. "So I reached out for help. Preferably, with the current Demon Hunters with the power of the Honmoon. I met with Celine to discuss our options, and that was when, left with no other choice, she finally revealed the truth. Not only is Ryu's child alive, but she is also one of the current hunters. And here's the part that changes everything, she's half demon. Imagine that, a Hunter who is also a Demon."
Mira's hands curled into fists, knuckles whitening as her glare sharpened into something lethal. "You keep saying that like it's some kind of curse," she spat, voice low and vibrating with fury. "Rumi has done more for this world than you or your Corps ever could."
Rumi's breath came ragged, her chest tightening as the words dug into her. Zerida's unflinching words pinned her like a butterfly beneath glass. 'A hunter who is also a demon. There's another half demon, just like me.'
Zoey shifted uncomfortably, eyes darting between Rumi and Zerida, uncertainty battling with loyalty. "She's not, she's not the enemy," she said weakly, as though trying to convince herself as much as the others. "Rumi's… she's Rumi."
Zerida scoffed, lifting her bleeding hand as if to punctuate her contempt. "You mistake sentiment for truth. You're simply too blinded by your affection to see that."
Mira's chair scraped back violently as she surged forward, her Gok-do manifesting in her hands, but Rumi caught her arm. Her grip trembled, but her eyes were steady now. "Mira, don't."
"But she's..."
"I said don't." Rumi's voice carried an edge she rarely let loose, one that silenced Mira as effectively as Zerida's raised hand had silenced Zoey earlier. Slowly, she rose to her feet, never breaking Zerida's gaze.
"You said you came here for an ongoing emergency," Rumi stated flatly. "I don't need to guess to know what you want from us."
Zerida allowed herself the faintest of smiles as she leaned back into her chair, every movement steeped in practiced grace. Behind her, the two young women who had drawn their weapons earlier shifted in unison, taking a single step back, their eyes sharp as they stood like silent sentinels.
"Assuming the demon in question isn't some fabrication by you, meant to pull the wool over our eyes," Zerida said coolly, "we've identified another of their targets. Preparations for a confrontation with this so-called Demon Hunter Hunter are already underway. This time, I will be leading an even larger force."
Mira scoffed, unable to contain herself. "And you expect us to come with you? After everything you just said? Where do you get the..."
"We'll do it."
The words cut across Mira's anger like a blade. Rumi's voice was calm, steady, but resolute. She turned toward Mira, her silver eyes unwavering. "What they think of us doesn't matter. What matters is that people are dying, and we can stop it. That's our responsibility. That's what we do."
Zoey pushed herself to her feet beside them, her expression uncharacteristically serious. "Rumi's right. We can't just stand by."
Mira's shoulders slumped with visible frustration. She dragged a hand through her hair, exhaling sharply. "I know she's right." Her eyes hardened as she turned her glare on Zerida and her attendants, hostility blazing without disguise. "But I can't stand them."
One of Zerida's eyebrows arched in faint amusement, though she chose not to comment. Instead, she regarded the trio with an air of detached assessment. "Regardless of personal feelings, you three are without a doubt the strongest Demon Hunters alive."
Rumi held her gaze, searching for any hint of mockery, but found only cold certainty. Finally, she asked, "When do we move?"
Zerida rose with fluid poise, and Zoey's eyes caught on her hand, where only moments ago blood had streaked from shattered glass, the skin was flawless, the wound already healed as though it had never existed.
"The operation takes place in two weeks," Zerida announced. "The plans are finalized. Teams are assembled. The stage is already set. All that remains is to add the four of you."
Rumi nodded firmly. "We won't let you down."
From the corner of her eye, Mira watched her friend with unease, her suspicion simmering just beneath the surface. Something in Rumi's determination troubled her, though she couldn't yet place why.
"See that you don't," Zerida said simply. Then, without sparing another glance for Huntrix, she turned her gaze on Celine. Her words dripped with cold disdain. "I would say it was nice speaking with you again, but we both know that would be a lie."
With that final barb, Zerida pivoted sharply and swept toward the exit, her two attendants falling into step behind her like shadows.